Twelve-Step Recovery

At the Empowerment Center, clients are encouraged to engage in regular twelve-step recovery support meetings to enhance their community network of sober individuals and to develop tools for long-term sobriety from substance abuse. Twelve-step membership is mandatory while clients are engaged in treatment, participation is highly suggested in these support meetings to provide them with a supplement to the treatment they receive at The Empowerment Center.

What are Twelve-Step programs?

There are many twelve-step programs for addictions and compulsive behaviors. These programs are mutual aid groups that are designed to assist individuals in achieving sobriety and recovery from substance abuse. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) was founded in the 1930s by Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, who recognized the importance of recovering individuals helping others to maintain sobriety. Since their development, these twelve-step approaches have expanded to address a variety of other addictions such as Narcotics Anonymous (NA), Gamblers Anonymous (GA), Overeaters Anonymous, and Cocaine Anonymous. Whereas many other treatment methods cost a lot of money and require health insurance, twelve-step recovery meetings and membership costs nothing.

Interventions meant to serve as guidelines to overcome addiction are called The Twelve Steps. They are as follows:

  1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  6. We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Twelve Traditions also accompany the Twelve Steps. Whereas the Twelve Steps guide the individual, the Twelve Traditions are focused on the group. These were developed for the purpose to provide governing guidelines and to protect the anonymity of the individuals in the programs. You may find these, along with the Twelve Steps, hung on the walls of most meeting places.

A long-term study conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) found, at both one- and three-year follow-up interviews, that people with alcoholism who both received formal treatment and attended an AA group had a better chance of staying sober than those who only received formal treatment. NIAAA concluded that stronger connections between community-based meetings and professional treatment resources will equate to a more efficient systemic approach to managing alcohol use disorders. (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. (2011). The Role of Mutual-Help Groups in Extending the Framework of Treatment. Alcohol Research & Health, 33(4).)

Sponsorship

The Empowerment Center requires clients obtain a sponsor while they are engaged in treatment. A sponsor is a twelve-step member in recovery who shares their “experience, strength and hope” with one’s “sponsee” (or aspirant) and guides the new individual through the twelve steps. This relationship can be pivotal in one’s sobriety because sponsors offer guidance, support, and a shared experience, which in turn, can give hope to the individual who is struggling to maintain abstinence from substance abuse.

Find Treatment

There are more than 50,000 Alcoholics Anonymous groups and 70,000 Narcotics Anonymous meetings worldwide. These groups meet both in person and remotely. If you have further questions about Twelve-Step programs or where to find meetings in Northern Nevada, please contact the community resources below.

Northern Nevada Intergroup of Alcoholics Anonymous – Central Office

436 South Rock Blvd., Sparks, NV 89431
(775) 355-1151
nnig.org

Sierra Sage Region of Narcotics Anonymous

(888) 850-2205
Sierrasagena.org

The Empowerment Center 12-Step Meetings

The Empowerment Center requires clients obtain a sponsor while they are engaged in treatment. A sponsor is a twelve-step member in recovery who shares their “experience, strength and hope” with one’s “sponsee” (or aspirant) and guides the new individual through the twelve steps. This relationship can be pivotal in one’s sobriety because sponsors offer guidance, support, and a shared experience, which in turn, can give hope to the individual who is struggling to maintain abstinence from substance abuse.